Marietta, Ohio - April 25, 2011

Cabela's was...interesting. Cool outdoor stuff, but all the stuffed dead animals were fairly creepy. There was dead stuff from everywhere, displayed everywhere. Dead fish, dead ducklings, dead elephants, and a about 400 dead deer. A giant nature mausoleum. They had some live fish, too, big koi and freshwater game fish. As I said, ...interesting.

We walked around Harmar Village after dinner. The pedestrian bridge was in great shape. Huge flower baskets were suspended from the bridgework. I'll bet they're beautiful during the summer.

The train side is a picturesque ruin - rotted trestles with trees and weeds growing in the holes. Definitely a kid magnet. The water's deep enough that falling in wouldn't be a problem. Inadvisable the week we were there, though, since the Muskingum and Ohio were flooding.

It'll be nice to go back in the summer and take a paddle boat tour on the Ohio.

Push Boats on the Ohio, April 25, 2011

As we drove down OH Rt. 7, we saw lots of these push boats moving coal barges upriver. The Ohio was flooding, with a really strong current, yet the push boats were movig as many as six fully loaded barges upstream and leaving enormous wakes. They have to have seriously powerful engines.

We watched this one chugging upriver from a little park in Marietta, on the bridge to Harmar Village.

Exciting News Flash

Yes, it finally happened!! Snidely Chucklash is no more! Chuck pruned the Victorian twirler back into a goat, and looks ten years younger and quite cute.

(Sorry, Honey, I had to!)

O'Neil Woods - CVPS Photowalk, May 14

What a soggy day for a photo walk. We met at the barn on Bath Road and walked toward Yellow Creek, then up the hill a bit. Phlox, geranium, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit were blooming. The Jacks make me sad - they remind me of riding with Larry in the woods at Promise Land Farm. Anyway, very humid with sporadic rain. No wind to speak of, but everything was moving from drips coming off the trees. I wanted to shoot Yellow Creek - it was just busting down the ravine - but the water was too muddy from runoff.

Not entirely sure what this plant is, a cherry maybe? The flowers look like the ones on the wild cherries in my backyard in Brimfield.

I love the CVPS photowalks. I learn something everytime (like there's something to shoot even on a rainy day), the people are nice, and the chat over breakfast is always interesting.

Marietta, Ohio

One of the little shops in Harmar Village had unique landscape art - yep, a dozen old bikes hanging from a tree. Only open on weekends, so we didn't get to see what interesting stuff was inside.

I adjusted the color temperature, saturated the blues, increase contrast, sharpened and added a vignette, all in Lightroom 3.

The Brenda Tharp tips are coming, it's been a really busy couple of weeks. I hope it slows down a bit next week.

Composition Tips from Brenda Tharp

Some notes on composition from Brenda Tharp's workshop

Rather than giving us a lesson on composition, she wove the information through the first critique on Friday morning. We each submitted 6 photos taken before the workshop, and she reviewed them with us in a group session. It could have been nerve-racking - putting our work out there for a professional to, basically, tear apart - but Brenda is very thoughtful and direct.

The first thing she zeroed in on was "bulls eying", the tendency we have to put the subject smack in the middle of the frame. It makes for a very static picture. She reminded us about the "rule of thirds", which means dividing the frame into thirds horizontally and vertically, and placing the subject roughly where the lines intersect. She cropped some one's bulls eye shot to follow the rule, and it made a dramatic improvement in the photo. Brenda was adamant about splitting the frame in half, vertically or horizontally, because it just stops the eye. Move the horizon or strong lines out of the center to allow the eye to flow through the photo.

Visual clutter is a bad thing in a photo. It distracts from the subject and makes it hard for the viewer to understand what the photographer wants to convey. She suggest using depth of field to isolate the subject from a busy background. This is one of Chuck's favorite techniques: get the subject really sharp, and blur out the background.

Brenda told us to simply, even in big landscapes. This is something I have a trouble with. My landscape shots are just a mess of everything I see, so there's no real subject to catch your eye.

Another interesting thing she noted is that we generally look at pictures from left to right, top to bottom. It's easier for the viewer if you set up your composition to be "read" that way.

Brenda had more good information on composition, but I think I'll save it for another post.

Brenda Tharp - Thoughts from the Workshop

Brenda is a wonderful teacher - her focus is as much on the art of photography as on technical finesse. She opened the workshop Thursday night with some thoughts on the essence of photography.

She suggested that we practice "daily seeing" - increasing our awareness of light and compostion, noting what would make a good picture, even when we don't have a camera in hand. She asked that we work to clarify our vision, show what excited us about a subject. If it's the dew on a daffodil, compose to highlight the dew. If it's the cheerful abundance of a field a daffodils, use color and depth of field to fill the frame. "What," she asked, "are you trying to express - on the simplest level, what is the picture about?"

I'll post some additional notes from the workshop this week, hoping both to share and to more firmly fix the information in my brain.

For more information about Brenda and her work, visit: http://www.brendatharp.com